So you think that the research is wrong?
I see it as very plausible. Kids like to break rules and long for forbidden fruits. When weed is no longer forbidden, they have no interest in it just as they see little interest in getting drunk.
I see it as very plausible. Kids like to break rules and long for forbidden fruits. When weed is no longer forbidden, they have no interest in it just as they see little interest in getting drunk.
I’m not saying that this is the case as legal recreational marijuana sale prices in many legal states are high enough (due to taxes or artificial supply dampening due to restricting who can grow it and how much) to justify the existence of a black market, but if that was the case, I’d expect a drop off in youth usage.
Most people in our cohort tend to follow a "you do you" philosophy that cuts both ways - if you choose to or choose not to partake in marijuana or alcohol, that's your choice.
Stuff like "marijuana" or "alcohol" isn't viewed as cool or uncool, it's just viewed as a yet another consumable like coffee or sugar.
Same way some people choose to cut down on coffee and others are coffee fiends, it's similar with booze and weed.
Personally, I find that older generations have an unhealthily polarized view on weed and alcohol consumption - they are split between the "weed cures everything" and "weed is the devil's lettuce" camps.
Heck, even this thread has tinges of judgement about how younger generations just don't care one way or the other about weed as if weed consumption is a core part of being young.
It's not like there WASN'T drinking, vaping, and weed. Just no one is pushing it on you. The pushing is a lot more focused on social (and online) things now. But that's a different topic.
I'm on board for it being a good thing. The kids are alright eh?
Exactly!
> I'm on board for it being a good thing. The kids are alright eh?
That's my opinion as well, but I'm part of the Zillenial cohort as well so I'm biased.
It never is. The overhead from running a lawful business is way higher even before you start accounting for all the weed specific cost of compliance stuff.
I live in MI and weed is really, really cheap here. I don't smoke, but I partake in edibles (I have MS and nerve pain that meds can't do much about). I can get 2000mg of edibles for 40 bucks. And that's without price comparing: That's just going to the closest dispensary near my house. And lots of places do penny/free joints with a very low/no minimum purchase.
Example: instead of buying meat at a formal (as in, legal business that pays taxes, has the proper sanitary reviews, etc) butcher shop, its buying from a small producer who kills their own animals, or from some shady figure who kills other producer’s animals.
Another example is alcohol and cigarettes that are bought at duty free shops by mules and then sold tax free in street markets.
The edge of the black market over lawful business ranges from small to huge depending mostly on how regulated the lawful business is and the costs of a physical location (think street sales of snacks right across from a shop that also sells snacks but also has to pay rent, utilities, taxes, etc).
That is a very marginal case. The vast majority of revenue in the meat business goes through the big corporations.
"Another example is alcohol and cigarettes that are bought at duty free shops by mules and then sold tax free in street markets."
Oh yeah, if you burden the legal producers with extraordinary, punitive taxes, the black market unburdened with them can flourish.
That's exactly what most states, though apparently not Washington, do with weed.
They casually offered that, as children of the '70s, there really weren't any drugs they hadn't tried, so if I was interested in any, I could just let them know and they'd get them and we could do them together.
Made it seem as uncool as humanly possible, so I never tried.
By the time our youngest brother was a teen, they'd gotten overconfident in their success and never made the offer to him. He eventually quit using, but it took 12 steps and a lot of time and effort my sister and I were spared!
Slightly different though - parents offered a cigarette during the time when they would say "Bleeeeech! this is horrible!"
I think it headed off the time later when they wouldn't be able to react in front of their peers.
Weed is popular among millennials, which are now the “cringe” generation so there’s that as well.
Weed just isn’t as cool as it was before.
some people just like it more than alcohol, wtf
In places where weed is legal, you can go into a store, buy some, try it, and if you decide it's not for you, just don't do it again. I don't use weed, but yesterday I walked into a liquor store to buy a stout beer I like. I didn't have to hang out and party with the clerk to get her to trust me enough to sell me my beer. I gave her some money, she handed me a shopping bag, and that's the end of it. That's what it's like buying weed from a dispensary now.
TL;DR if you don't have to hang out with drug dealers to buy drugs, you might be less inclined to buy more stuff from drug dealers.
Shortcut: go the biggest hospital near you and find the fast food joint nearest the ER entrance. The drug users discharged after OD treatment will gather there and the dealers find then.
I think a poorly designed study can confirm pre-existing biases instead of actually test for anything.
Stating that "research suggests" something doesn't actually mean much to me anymore.
I'd love to know what research suggests that “marijuana legalization in adults can influence adolescent behavior through their perceptions of less risk as well as increased availability, both of which may impede efforts to reduce adolescent use.” The numbers this article is reporting seem to suggest the opposite.
I believe drugs (incl. alcohool) are a considerably more complex habits.
Getting intoxicated have socially desirable outcomes (if one ignores the downsides), unrelated to unavailability. Some drugs like weed can also be part of rituals (e.g. "meeting and getting stoned").